Phantasm is just too strong and you really think a 6 sec freedom is not good against frost mages? Every 30 seconds? Losing the old phantasm sucks but it's is not going to bump us down to low tier. The main issue I have is melee cleaves and yea they are still going to be freaking hard to deal with.
And our burst is still there. 6 seconds is still a short window and you better have some situational awareness to know when to use it. Don't know if the damage got buffed if you have a lot of mastery.

Phantasm needed a nerf, and oh well, the whole universe agree with that.

But the burst is gone, that's not very hard to figure out. We may deal SOME sudden pressure and that's all (you very understiamting the combination of DP front + spike gly nerfs)

Void Shift gonna be nerfed for shadow.

What is left is MD, wich i'm not native, won't stay as strong for shadow; they gonna do some kid of purge-like nerf.

Btw they are not the nerfs per se, but this going to be a really different toon, there's no other way to look at the changes.
I did stop my warlock because i didn't want to be carried just because of blood fear, should i go with shadow just for the once-in-6-minutes- shifts and MDs?

With the upcoming healing nerfs jumping out of shadowform just to cast anything but PoM renews and shields is a waste of time.

I really liked this sudden bursts from shadow, it was the fun factor for me. It was not gigantic (don't even dare to compare us as the usual bursty specs...) but not tied to cc, impossible to predict, and now its gone.

I assume you mean Shadow. Maybe, but only if they allow us to cast SOMETHING with melee locking out Shadow school. If not, SPriests are not viable. Any priest will not be viable.

You can still heal if locked out of the shadow school. Bubble, Renew, PoM, and none of those break Shadowform when glyphed, and Shadowform reduces damage taken.

Which is why healing was nerfed. As far as shadow is concerned, of all of the DPS casters it is the ONLY hybrid that has healing spells tied to a completely separate spell school. If an Elemental is interrupted while casting Lightning Bolt, they can't heal. Mages and warlocks don't really have healing spells to begin with.

I've yet to fathom how, of all these supposed PvPers in this thread, not a single one of you has come to this realization yet.

I like how everyone compares dispersion to Paladin bubble and Mage ice block. They are totally different things. Bubble and ice block make you immune to all damage and can be removed with md or shattering throw. Dispersion we take 90% reduced damage, server latency can get you killed for its weird delay, and you can still die while dispersed. I never understood why mana regen was tied to it back in the Wotlk FFA. I'd rather heave the healing component back since they nerfed to hell our VE from being a passive ability.

I like how everyone compares dispersion to Paladin bubble and Mage ice block. They are totally different things. Bubble and ice block make you immune to all damage and can be removed with md or shattering throw. Dispersion we take 90% reduced damage, server latency can get you killed for its weird delay, and you can still die while dispersed. I never understood why mana regen was tied to it back in the Wotlk FFA. I'd rather heave the healing component back since they nerfed to hell our VE from being a passive ability.

You can still heal if locked out of the shadow school. Bubble, Renew, PoM, and none of those break Shadowform when glyphed, and Shadowform reduces damage taken.

Which is why healing was nerfed. As far as shadow is concerned, of all of the DPS casters it is the ONLY hybrid that has healing spells tied to a completely separate spell school. If an Elemental is interrupted while casting Lightning Bolt, they can't heal. Mages and warlocks don't really have healing spells to begin with.

I've yet to fathom how, of all these supposed PvPers in this thread, not a single one of you has come to this realization yet.

Because when under focus, all the mentioned are going to be purged/stealed away and they heal for miserably nothing already in live.
Next they basically won't heal, or the nerf reverted for the sake of dark bining glyph nerf.

MD and VShift are the next two target, looks obvious for me; and there's the chance that VE glyph will be gone as well. Not that matter, the healing without instant DPs and Blasts will be terrible anyway.

That site says nothing about gladiator distribution. 2.2k is a bit uninterresting number, because anyone playing at a high level of PvP will be able to obtain tier 2. Gladiator distribution is much more interresting, because it will to a much higher degree eliminate the 'weaker' specs.

By the way, if you only look at 3v3 distribtution, you will notice that shadow priests are the highest representated caster spec, and that priest representation is higher than mage representation, and a lot higher than warlock representation.

Normally the site does show 2200, 2400, 2600, 2800, 3k brackets seperately - because of the rampant wintrading and MMR hacks this season, it decided to only display 2200+ this season. The higher distribution brackets were actually showing nonsensical numbers (since if you're going to MMR exploit, there's no reason not to do it on a rogue or holy priest). The higher the bracket you go, the fewer examples you get, and the more a handful of individuals - not their classes - determine the numbers. 2200+ is therefore often the tool used even when the higher brackets are shown, because it is the largest pool of data - and by this point non-functional specs have already been weeded out (see rogues and holy priests).

If you actually see Gladiator distribution though (someone on the pvp forums posts it occasionally using their own script), it quite accurately mimicks what you see above 2200, except the <1% specs disappear almost completely. In 3v3 distribution, Shadow and Frost are equal, but Fire is half as successful as either of them - so mages as a whole are 50% more common than spriests. Shadow representation is higher than Affliction representation, but warlock representation is equal to shadow/priest representation even in 3v3, on Live - before buffs to locks, buff/nerfs to mages, and colossal nerfs to spriests. Even if you thought shadow was the best caster this season (subjectively, because objectively that's debatable as we're seeing) - why you would think that would be true next season is a mystery to me.

The whole point for that talent was to use the procs to cut down the cast time of mind blast in regular rotation so you could get mind blast on cooldown faster and thereby generate more orbs. There is now no reason whatsoever to use fdcl as shadow. They accomplished their task of making insanity more attractive by gutting it's competing talents.

They have a bad habit of doing this. They try to strong-arm people into playing the spec the way they want you to, or force you to use their shiny new preciouses in spite of how good or bad they may be.

And it's not just FDCL they're gutting either. Shadow priests have extremely limited damage-on-the-move as is. With the change to the Mind Spike glyph, we're pretty much borked. Add in the change to Phantasm, and we will never get a cast off in PvP with a melee on us. If they want to change Phantasm (as they don't like the untargetability), they should add in an immune-to-interrupt component to it.

If you actually see Gladiator distribution though (someone on the pvp forums posts it occasionally using their own script), it quite accurately mimicks what you see above 2200, except the <1% specs disappear almost completely. In 3v3 distribution, Shadow and Frost are equal, but Fire is half as successful as either of them - so mages as a whole are 50% more common than spriests. Shadow representation is higher than Affliction representation, but warlock representation is equal to shadow/priest representation even in 3v3, on Live - before buffs to locks, buff/nerfs to mages, and colossal nerfs to spriests. Even if you thought shadow was the best caster this season (subjectively, because objectively that's debatable as we're seeing) - why you would think that would be true next season is a mystery to me.

I checked the top 20 of all EU battlegroups currently.
Mage vs Shadow - Remember the current gladiator spots are around 13 on average.

I found: 99 spriests and 69 mages. Maybe on the US it's different and the comps vary more, but currently shadow priests are the best at higher ratings.

I've just checked my arena viewer for the past 50 games in the past two weeks, all of these games are at or above 2450 MMR. There were 7 mage teams, 23 spriest teams and 1 warlock. No ele or balance in there at all.

Now, I've played shadow priest now for 4 seasons and I agree these nerfs will hurt but they won't make us bad, we are currently the best with mage coming in a close second, but also remember some of the nerfs will hit them very hard too, PoM ring being a massive blow to them.

tl;dr spriests are too good right now but will continue to be viable after the nerfs hit, I'd expect a void shift nerf though.

I checked the top 20 of all EU battlegroups currently.
Mage vs Shadow - Remember the current gladiator spots are around 13 on average.

I found: 99 spriests and 69 mages. Maybe on the US it's different and the comps vary more, but currently shadow priests are the best at higher ratings.

I've just checked my arena viewer for the past 50 games in the past two weeks, all of these games are at or above 2450 MMR. There were 7 mage teams, 23 spriest teams and 1 warlock. No ele or balance in there at all.

Now, I've played shadow priest now for 4 seasons and I agree these nerfs will hurt but they won't make us bad, we are currently the best with mage coming in a close second, but also remember some of the nerfs will hit them very hard too, PoM ring being a massive blow to them.

tl;dr spriests are too good right now but will continue to be viable after the nerfs hit, I'd expect a void shift nerf though.

I just checked top 10 3v3 active teams on all battlegroups (with active i mean full teams. not 1 or 2 players camping rating)
and there is exactly 32 shadow priests and 30 mages across all battlegroups.

Yeah... shadow priests are clearly far superior seeing that there is a grand total of 2 more shadow priests in top10.

Blizz needs to stop listening to battleground-heroes and fix this game before it turns to shit (more shit that is)

Blizz needs to stop listening to battleground-heroes and fix this game before it turns to shit (more shit that is)

Yeah, like that will ever happen. Blizzard are listening to them because of the majority of players are casuals, doing bgs/dungeons/LFR and low-rated arenas.
If blizzard would listen to people that actually can prove a class being bad(or too good)(as in good theorycrafters), the game itself would've been so freakin good.

Ofc some classes are gonna have the upper hand in some situations, but if they could split pvp from pve, as in the abilities would work different/lower/higher damage in Pve and pvp it would be so much easier to balance for both categories.

Ofc some classes are gonna have the upper hand in some situations, but if they could split pvp from pve, as in the abilities would work different/lower/higher damage in Pve and pvp it would be so much easier to balance for both categories.

This would balance the game SO much but theyve said that they dont want to do this because it will make the game more complicated for bads...

At first i thought this was because they were lazy but im suspecting it is because they would lose too many bad players if they made these changes.

All about teh casualz these days many games are moving towards this. But tbh I don't think it would make anything complicated.

Unless. It could mean a full sweep of coding which might take ages to do. That could be why. It's best not to judge calling blizzard "lazy" unless you know what goes on in there.

Seriously... they get insane amounts of cash every month so the finances are most def there. THey just need to get people to do it.
They have already made some spells with dual effects so they cant make excuses that it isnt possible.

On front page of MMO: Glyph of Mind Spike When you deal damage with Mind Spike Your successful non-instant Mind Spikes, reduce, the cast time of your next Mind Blast is reduced by 50% lasting 6 sec. within 9 sec by 50%.
i dont know how to post actual links so i just copied and pasted, on front page.

This is pretty big really.. It means to ever use this would mean you would HAVE to cancel out your dots.

The insanity change: Solace and Insanity Shadow: When cast on a target that has three of your Shadow damage-over-time spells applied, your Mind Flay gains the insanity effect. Shadow: Your Devouring Plague increases the damage of Mind Flay by 33% per orb consumed. Assault the target's mind with Shadow energy, causing 45 Shadow damage over 3 sec and slowing their movement speed by 50%.

This looks promising, definitely better than it was on ptr with the 3 dot rubbish

So, they literally nerfed the dog shit out of everything shadow does in PVP. That removes all excuses for not buffing the hell of out shadow's pve dps output now right??? right ???????

How is this better? Now you can't 1 orb devouring plague and spam insanity flays. This talent went from very strong in pvp to worst of the tier.

If you've tried PTR, you'll notice Shadow Priests topping KBs in random BGs due to Insanity. 3 orb DP + Insanity = Fat Burst. Fatter than old Taste for Blood and Frost burst. The only downside is that Insanity burst is spread out over a longer period of time and is countered by dispels.

If you've tried PTR, you'll notice Shadow Priests topping KBs in random BGs due to Insanity. 3 orb DP + Insanity = Fat Burst. Fatter than old Taste for Blood and Frost burst. The only downside is that Insanity burst is spread out over a longer period of time and is countered by dispels.

So just to be clear, it bursts for less (deals damage over a longer period of time), is countered by dispels, knockbacks, kicks and all CC over a 7 second window rather than a single GCD (or in TfB's case - not even a GCD) - totally fair comparison! /sarcasm off

I'm not saying Insanity sucks, don't get me wrong - it's a good addition to our repetoire - maybe I dreamed of something a little more 'interesting' - but it will happily do - but don't compare it to TfB / Frost Bomb just yet ;p I could see you pulling it off in RBGs / casual BGs - but I doubt an arena team is going to let you channel them to death (more reason to sit on the spriest once they realize that's the talent you took). For Shatterplay/Godcomp though, maybe - mage CC leave you freecasting... hmmm, maybe this is me just QQ'ing that I'm not playing Shatterplay this season or next ><